


Plaid, Feliform, Doom, Nebula

by TriffidsandCuckoos



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Aziraphale's Bookshop (Good Omens), Crowley is Bad at Feelings (Good Omens), Domestic Fluff, Fluff, Just Add Kittens, M/M, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-11
Updated: 2019-07-11
Packaged: 2020-06-26 16:31:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19772098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TriffidsandCuckoos/pseuds/TriffidsandCuckoos
Summary: Crowley is a sweetheart who found a kitten box. Where else is he supposed to take them?





	Plaid, Feliform, Doom, Nebula

**Author's Note:**

  * For [flightinflame](https://archiveofourown.org/users/flightinflame/gifts).



> Blame flightinflame for everything to do with this fic, from the initial prompt through to the summary and various questions in between. I don't know how this is over 6000 words long but this is the universe we live in.

The thing about London, or rather the thing about being a blessed being and servant of the Almighty (more as a hobby than a job description these days), is that cats are never really that far away. Aziraphale was more than used to any number of Her feline creations stalking up to him with the sole and inescapable intent of being petted, a desire which really would have been too cruel to deny. (It was hardly Aziraphale's fault that humans had never seemed to trust lions.) They would take what they deemed their due, and then they would depart, and while Aziraphale might secretly like the way dogs would stay and hang on your every word until something shiny caught their eye, there was something appealing about being singled out by anything so discerning.

All this was to say, on the rainy day in question – no, _showery_ , possibly even _stairrods_ , unlike certain other angels Aziraphale was quite determined to learn all the names humans could compose, even if he couldn't always use them correctly because it was the thought and, more importantly, the _enthusiasm_ which counted – on that day, when Aziraphale harkened to a particularly pathetic mewl, he was not all that surprised. Personally he had never quite taken to rain – a personal preference which led Crowley to constantly question his choice of permanent residence, as if the stuff never fell anywhere else _as they both knew full well_ – and while obviously he praised the Almighty's clear thinking with the water cycle model ("you're an angel," Crowley would groan, "everything's all about _praise_ with you, like a bit of constructive criticism never hurt anyone"), as much as he _appreciated_ it, Aziraphale felt that the essential beauty of the rain was far better appreciated inside with a cup of cocoa and a lovely book of Romantic poetry. (Not that he would let Crowley know about the latter, of course. Far too many of Crowley's set involved there.) Cats too generally appreciated this.

The actual surprise came when the first mewl was joined by another, and then another. Aziraphale frowned a little at the growing chorus, and deeper as no cats in fact materialised before him. Belatedly he registered the tug of air at his trouser legs and neck, the unmistakeable damp scent of an intruder into his little piece of E- _home_.

"Angel!"

A moment too late, Aziraphale realised he'd closed the book without marking his place. "Oh, for – " he muttered, quickly miracling it back open before entering the front of the shop and coming to a sharp halt.

Crowley didn't tend to announce his arrivals, presumably because Aziraphale's mild irritations helped to balance the books in some ineffable manner. Of course, this had become expected, and therefore his appearance in Aziraphale's shop without warning didn't really warrant any reaction at all (besides a slight tug at Aziraphale's mouth upwards, the same as when he'd opened his book earlier, human bodies really had the funniest quirks left to their own devices). What did give Aziraphale pause, the instinctive "oh my" somewhat frozen on his lips, was the demon's appearance. Constantly what he claimed to be the epitome of fashion (so long as it came in black), Crowley’s vanity alongside his natural embracing of any other sins going seemed rather at odds with the drenched sight confronting Aziraphale now: clothes limp and clinging both at the same time in the least flattering combinations; hair plastered over his glasses; shoes squelching alarmingly. Seeing Crowley in such a state caused such deep spiritual alarm that it took Aziraphale additional time to notice the box in his hands, by contrast completely dry, and mewling rather pointedly in the way only babies did.

"Crowley?" Aziraphale asked, deciding that so many questions demanded attention that at that precise moment it was best to start simple.

Crowley scowled and held out the box. "Yours, angel."

"Mine? What are you – " Instinctively Aziraphale's hands came up to take hold of the cardboard (again, truly remarkable what even a careful recreation of a body with the capabilities of containing an angelic being could achieve alone), and he jumped a little at the unexpected warmth of it. He looked down, and four small furry faces gazed up at him. "Oh my, I – Crowley, what is going on?"

Crowley had hastily retreated the moment he'd let go, but now he seemed rather caught by the door, glaring out at the rain with distinct displeasure. "I said they're yours."

"Oh, don't be ridiculous," Aziraphale said, aware his voice was already responding to the small darlings, "I'm sure they have a mother or owners already, just look at them!"

"You look at them," Crowley muttered.

It was explicitly forbidden for humans to covet another's oxen or spouse, and implicitly forbidden to covet anything else. Still an angel, Aziraphale naturally did not covet because he was supposed to be above all that. (The Almighty might point out that the confusion over the apple tree clearly indicated how being above something in fact bespoke a complete inability to comprehend it, but that would require the Almighty to actually engage in conversation rather than the divine equivalent of a drinking game with extremely extensive rules and a bottomless shot glass.) Because Aziraphale ontologically did not covet, the way his hands were tightening around the edges of the box simply indicated an innocent precautionary measure.

The contents of said box, upon consideration, consisted of four (4) bundles of fluff and confusion, hereafter referred to as 'kittens', although you might be forgiven for some confusion in accounting for the exact number due to either the standard human downgrading of intelligence in their presence or the fact that all of them had somehow twined together into the Platonic ideal of kittenhood. They mewled; they cocked their heads; they yawned adorably. It didn't take much to make Aziraphale's heart melt, but it wasn't often it sublimated.

He cleared his throat and extended his arms away from him, a gesture which still made its point despite his body following close behind. "Really, Crowley, you know I can't accept stolen goods. It wouldn't be fitting."

Crowley looked from the rain to him, then towards the shop's back room, all with the same unimpressed disdain which came naturally to him and certainly did not reflect any specific judgements, Aziraphale was sure. (If he stepped slightly to the side, that signified nothing, given that it did nothing to actually obscure the door for any beings of occult or ethereal persuasion, no more than those sunglasses.) "'Fitting'."

"Quite."

"They're not stolen, angel. Check the box."

Aziraphale frowned but obliged, muttering a polite "excuse me" to the inhabitants before raising them up to examine the cardboard. To his surprise, there was indeed a note, scrawled in ink which appeared to have run despite the box's dry state. Over a stylised corporate smile which reminded him uncomfortably of Gabriel, large black letters declared 'FREE KITTENS'.

"I say," he did, indeed, say. "How generous!"

"It'sss not generous, angel," Crowley snapped. It was less the tone than the sibilance which caught Aziraphale's attention. Raising his voice was standard for the demon; mixing forms whilst supposedly sober less so. Then again, looking once more at his soaked state, Aziraphale couldn't help being reminded less of a snake than a half-drowned – "'Free' means nobody wantsss them."

Aziraphale looked down upon the mass of grey and white and black and ginger shifting gently.

"Surely not." There was, he noted, the same quaver in his voice which Crowley had a way of eliciting by making precisely the wrong points – for an angel, in any case. "No, I think this is rather some charitable soul who – "

"A 'charitable soul' who leaves them on a street corner, angel?" Crowley's eyebrows were raised up high in clear sardonic semaphore. "Out in the rain? That usual for a charity, is it?"

In contrast to those eyebrows, Aziraphale felt a sensation a human might consider to be their heart sinking. Angels didn't have hearts, and corporeality didn't really extend to the metaphorical details, but it felt something between watching an amateur baker choose salt instead of sugar and biting into a pastry with insufficient lamination: as if another good thing in the world had died.

"Surely not."

Crowley didn't even comment on the repetition. The pitying look on his face, however, felt a hundred times worse.

"Businessss as usual, it would seem."

Right. Because the problem with nothing ending was that everything carried on just the same.

Aziraphale took a deep breath, then forced a smile. It felt less painful than usual, which was something. "So, what are their names?"

Crowley appeared not to react, which generally meant a great deal was happening behind those pesky glasses. As much as Aziraphale put very little by the whims of any fashion after roughly 1897, he couldn't help but hope that the next arbitrary human decision would favour rather smaller lenses. 

Finally, he echoed in a faint voice, "'Their names'?"

"Well, yes," Aziraphale said. "Obviously they must have names."

"Must they?" Crowley asked, before seeming to catch himself in mid-slither and taking a step back. "Yes, they must, and that seems very much your sort of thing, so if you don't mind – "

"Oh, of course I don't!" With the brisk friendliness of any Englishperson determined to will a vast disappointment out of existence, Aziraphale ushered Crowley into the back, relying less on miracles than a wide smile accompanied by slightly less wide eyes. Crowley was left standing in the middle of the rug with the appearance of it having already been pulled out from under him. "Now then, you get the tea, and let's have a look at them." 

The kettle whistled obediently in agreement, a siren song which seemed to snap Crowley back into his usual denial. "No, no," Crowley said, "absolutely not. I am not _sipping tea_ and _naming kittens_ with you."

"Well, yes, I had noticed your technique could use some work," Aziraphale agreed, delighted by this rare admittance of a fixable flaw rather than the cosmic variety Crowley tended to linger on exhaustively. "You see, the idea is to consume the tea without noise – "

Generally Crowley only looked at him like that on the rare occasion he experimented with sobering up in a more human fashion. "Angel, shut up."

Well. He was only trying to help.

As sins went, pettiness didn't make the list, a fact for which Aziraphale was extremely grateful on occasions such as this one, when he said nothing but pointedly placed the box of kittens on the table whilst averting his head from the demon. He kept his head thus turned as he reached in and removed the first resident: a fluffy mass of grey with the softness of his favourite scarf, who, after the initial shock of its new elevation, promptly began wriggling around in Aziraphale's hands in search of something, presumably adventure. Despite being literally made to sing the love of the Almighty, Aziraphale felt a little lightheaded at the sight.

"Aren't you a precious little thing? What are you looking for, little one?"

"A decent conversation, maybe," Crowley muttered. Aziraphale continued to ignore him, lifting the wanderer up to eye level. The kitten mewled and placed its tiny paw on his mouth, and Aziraphale decided all over again that Heaven was more of an idea than anything else, experiencing a kind of bliss which led him to transcend pettiness to look with absolute love on all things, including Crowley. Fortunately Crowley did not look inclined to launch into yet more insults, and was instead stood leaning against a nearby bookcase with a slightly stunned air to his usual languor. (You learned a thing or two about body language after 6000 years, even if it was completely useless for anyone who hadn't been a snake at any point in their existence.)

The kitten lowered its paw and shouted pointedly in Aziraphale's face.

"Ah, of course," he said, carefully lowering him to the table. "Now, try not to wander off, and Crowley, catch him if he does."

The kitten promptly hopped off of the table. He landed on a black cushion with a squeak.

"They're just babies, angel, you can't reason with them." Thus spake Nanny Ashtoreth.

Aziraphale simply 'hmmed' in a practised noncommittal manner as he turned his attention to a calico, easily the smallest kitten in the box. Indeed, it fitted into just one of his palms, and it was only his actual knowledge of creative design which prevented him from one of those silly human sentiments where they leapt to conclusions about how a pet might have been made for them. He thought this even before it started gnawing on his finger – not with any success but great enthusiasm.

"Do you want me to take that one?" Crowley drawled, suddenly by Aziraphale's side as if he'd never left.

"I assure you, it doesn't hurt." And indeed it didn't. After everything his last body had survived, Aziraphale would be very disappointed indeed if this one was vulnerable to being gummed to death.

"Yes," Crowley said slowly, "it's just that I'm not sure you want them getting a taste for angelic flesh. That's how mistakes happen."

"You know perfectly well that that's a complete fallacy."

"No need for that sort of language, angel," Crowley said, already scooping the kitten into his own hands, whereupon she commenced gnawing on his own bony fingers. He wrinkled his nose and muttered something under his breath about 'accounting' and 'taste'. 

Hands free and finding himself in need of looking absolutely anywhere else lest he let slip some unfortunate sentiments, Aziraphale now retrieved a white ball, not unlike handling a cloud (if memory served), which blinked large blue eyes up at him. The sky in reverse, in a fanciful sense, and he permitted himself a small chuckle at his subtle imagery.

His amusement, however, was promptly shattered by a rather loud curse as the kitten chewing Crowley’s finger decided to sample other areas. Unconcerned as he might be about his flesh, Crowley really was alarmingly attached to his clothes (always a giveaway when Crowley chose to single something out for insult), and Aziraphale quickly outstretched his hand to scoop up the calico darling from the air before Crowley did something short-tempered which he would inevitably regret.

"That thing's a menace."

"She's a baby," Aziraphale reminded him. "Aren't you, my – " He stopped abruptly, noticing that while the grey dear on the cushion had scampered off at the sound and the calico had set up her own answering call, his cloud had only reacted once one of Aziraphale's hands had vanished.

"Oh, you dear little thing," he murmured, carefully reaching to pet the girl behind her ears. She yawned and wriggled, apparently content to be attended upon in such a manner and utterly unfussed by any meaningless words. Aziraphale supposed that he could provide that much.

In an extremely unwelcome turn of events, the image of the side of the box flashed through his mind. Being, in his own words, 'soft', Aziraphale did not allow wrath to cause anything unpleasant to occur in his immediate vicinity, although his hand did pause in its movement until the kitten all but lunged backwards into his palm and almost upended herself altogether.

"Your face is doing a thing," Crowley observed, performing the dance of a demon attempting to stop a smaller calico demon from ascending his trousers.

"It certainly is not."

Crowley lifted his sunglasses just enough to pointedly squint at him. "Nope, definite _thing_. Did it piss on your hand?"

"Certainly not!" Aziraphale said rather hurriedly, wondering exactly how even a demon could bring himself to glare at such innocence. "I was just – oh, never mind." Plenty of time for bleak ruminations later – or rather getting drunk whilst letting Crowley handle that end of things. As much as it pained him to see the demon contorting himself into more metaphysical shapes than literal, there was something soothing to the mind in letting someone else ponder the evil potentiality of personkind. Not schadenfreude, never that, but having problems rephrased in a manner which meant he could reassure them.

Sighing and straightening his body slightly, Aziraphale lowered the kitten-cloud back into the box, not wanting to alarm the poor tired thing any further. However, his warm smile froze a little bit when he turned his attention to the final cat and found himself confronted by the kind of dead-eyed stare which tended to label a subject always and forever as Prey.

Aziraphale was a former principality and a former garden guardian and a former apocalypse averter. In one look, this cat – the form rejected the word 'kitten' in much the same way as Gabriel rejected ‘human’, with disdain and spit – truly emphasised the 'former' in all three cases, even extending it further to add the epithet to 'angel' and 'living being'. It did not radiate anything as simple as a singular being, but rather a concept akin to War or Famine: That Which Brings Death.

A long spindly finger extended from out of the corner of his eye and pulled the box slowly closer to the side of the table. "Now, see, _that_ ," Crowley said, " _that_ is more like it."

Eye contact broken, Aziraphale felt his essence settle rather more comfortably back into place. Lightly touching his bow tie, grounding himself in the corporeal, he said, "I was just – "

"Were you just terrorising the angel?" Crowley asked the box. "'Course you were. Good kitty."

The 'good kitty' hissed in agreement, although certainly not about the title.

It would not do to say that Crowley exhibited discomfort of his own. His smile did not falter, nor did he look wary, for this would indicate some form of fear to those ill-informed as to Crowley's nature. There was, however, a distinct suggestion of slinking to the manner in which he withdrew, and a flash of teeth unconnected to a smile.

Somewhat buoyed by this, Aziraphale said, "I believe he likes you."

"That cat's never liked anyone in his life," Crowley said. "Sensible bastard."

"Well, I suppose they're all bastards, really."

Slowly -- very slowly, the sort of speed granted to tectonic plates and waiters unprepared to see you – Crowley looked at him. Crowley prided himself on his Looks, Aziraphale knew this, and it was that pride which made it precisely so satisfying to smile back. Thwarting wiles and all that. An extremely satisfying sin to overcome, Aziraphale always thought very smugly.

The skin around Crowley's right eye twitched. Carefully, not moving his head, he lifted his left foot off the floor to roughly hip height (as far as any of Crowley's joints could ever be precisely located, his hips least of all) and extracted the calico from her embedded grip on his ankle.

"Perhaps you were right," Aziraphale said with a nervous chuckle, "a taste for angelic flesh, of a sort."

It wasn't often you saw a demon looking at you murderously whilst holding a wriggling kitten in one hand – or at least a single kitten who seemed in little danger of death, as opposed to, say, an entire bag held out over a river. (A demon had tried this in front of Aziraphale once, sorely testing that 'no deaths' streak of which he'd always been so prou- _professionally_ pleased. In his defence, dismembering was not death, and nor was calling down an entire grove of forest creatures to dispense their own idea of justice.)

"I'll tell you one thing," Crowley announced, as if this retroactively invalidated every single other thing Crowley had ever told him in 6000 years (including the long tracts on tablets, parchment, and personal messaging equipment Aziraphale didn't remember ever acquiring), "I've got a good mind to put _this one_ in with the Deathbringer there."

"She came out of there," Aziraphale pointed out, before a wisp of cloud crossed his mind and he looked inside the box with some considerable alarm. (It would not, after all, be the first time he had accidentally caused death with the very best of intentions. God's sense of humour at work again, he supposed.)

He blinked.

Next to him, he was vaguely aware, Crowley had lifted the calico up far overhead in preparation to cast her into the box, and then frozen himself.

Nested inside the box, rather than a spot of terrorising and bloodshed, there was a picture of utter serenity. The small white kitten was curled up into much the same ball it had assumed in Aziraphale's hand, only now it had thoroughly burrowed itself into the Deathbringer's side and appeared to be sleeping again quite contentedly. The Deathbringer, meanwhile, glared up with a spot of tongue hanging in her darkness, apparently quite perturbed to have been caught in the act of grooming.

Aziraphale made the sort of noise the human ear physically cannot hear, but which the human mind experiences through the combination of colour and taste (a little like taking a piece of a technically consumable gelatin sweet and firing it directly into your cortex). Next to him, Crowley gagged and fell back, now wielding his calico nemesis more like a shield. "Do you _mind_?"

Despite the adoration of cats welling up in him, another kind of adoration in Aziraphale waved a small flag of guilt. "I..." He swallowed. "Well, you did bring baby animals here of all places."

"Where else was I sssupposed to bring them?" Crowley asked, in between gagging and hanging out his tongue as if you could choke up love like a hairball. (You can't, incidentally. Love is as insiduous as it is subtle.) "Anyway, that one," he pointed accusingly at the box, "betrayed me."

"I guess everyone has their softer side," Aziraphale said with the particular smile which sneaked out more and more easily these days.

"Oh, don't even ssstart with me." The calico bit Crowley's finger and he dropped it with a hiss, before hastily dodging to the other side of the table and seizing up the grey kitten from his wanderings as if animals respected a one-in one-out system. (Humans certainly didn't. Aziraphale had tried.)

With a sigh, Aziraphale looked back in the box and waggled his fingers in greeting as the Bringer of Death And Secret Softy glared up at him. "You know, looking again," he said with a glance at his companion, "she does remind me of someone..."

Crowley gagged again, tongue flicking out a little too far for a human body.

"I suppose, since we’re trying to think of names…"

"Don't." Crowley held the grey kitten close, warding the calico off with one foot and Aziraphale with one finger. "Whatever you do. I'm saying it now. Don't you dare."

"I didn't say – "

"You don't have to. I've _met_ you." He hopped awkwardly, now trying to shake the calico off his boot as he endeavoured to sound more commanding in contrast. "Nothing cute, nothing sweet, nothing literary, and nothing fucking _ethereal_."

Aziraphale did not pout. He also did not begrudgingly draw a line through several mental pages of names. "Well then, what would _you_ call them?" he asked, perhaps with a touch of peevishness to the words (in much the same way that his neighbours considered Aziraphale perhaps a touch camp).

"I wouldn't. I wouldn't be here."

"But you are here."

"Because it's _raining_ , angel, that's all there is to it. These," Crowley gestured expansively, "these are your business." 

"So I can call them whatever I'd like?"

"Absolutely not."

Aziraphale sighed. "Would you like me to get that one for you, Crowley?" He clicked his fingers and the calico materialised in his arms with an extremely surprised mewl. She remained at rest for a whole three seconds, before trying to reach for Crowley again with her mouth.

"You stay back," Crowley hissed, once again seeming to confuse the grey kitten with an actual shield. Said kitten blinked lazily at his proposed foe and wiggled his legs less in vengeance than to experiment with this concept of gravity.

"She _likes_ you," Aziraphale said, and if his mouth turned down ever so slightly, and his eyes shone just a touch, well, who was to say anything? (Besides God, who took another shot and cackled heartily.)

"She likes misery and torture," Crowley insisted. "I have places I can go for that sort of thing, I don't need it in your bookshop from a _cat _." Aziraphale's lip, perhaps, jutted out a little bit more. "I _don't_ ," he pleaded.__

__The grey kitten announced his final verdict on gravity, which was to say his displeasure, and commenced a series of movements which either made Crowley drop him or otherwise managed to pass straight through his demonic clutches onto a cushion which sped across the floor to accommodate him. From the way he sat up straight, Aziraphale feared they might have another speed fiend on their hands._ _

__The moment Crowley was 'free', the calico in Aziraphale's arms used his chest as a springboard and launched herself at Crowley, the forces of impact and recoil combining to send him backwards in a sprawl of limbs. Some of these limbs promptly evaporated, as the calico found, instead of her human-shaped prey, a large snake rearing up to hiss down at her. Abandoning dreams of racecar racing, the grey kitten scampered into Aziraphale's arms with a high-pitched shriek; the calico cocked her head, regarding the fangs and gleaming scales, before lying down on her front before the Serpent of Eden and yawning (adorably, naturally)._ _

__Aziraphale couldn't say at what point in these proceedings he'd sat down, save that it was possibly a more literal reading of sympathetic motion. Deciding that this level of existence clearly better suited kittens determined to jump off or at anything they could, he reached up for the box on the table – then hesitated, and simply levitated it down as gently as he could. (The Deathbringer did not thank him, for gratitude was for lesser beings, but she did not surge out and wreak bloody vengeance on all of Earthkind, which was basically the same miraculous thing.)_ _

__(The Deathbringer's ward did not awaken, which probably had more to do with the aforementioned lack of bloody vengeance than any angelic dispensation.)_ _

__The grey kitten had endeavoured to wrap itself around his neck. He really was as soft as any scarf. "Tartan," Aziraphale announced with pride._ _

__With a rippling effect reminiscent of the marbled covers Aziraphale had adored in Venice, scales melted back into skinny jeans, and amber eyes, currently separated from their sunglasses, rolled back in resignation as the calico perched on Crowley's chest in triumph. "You are never naming anything again."_ _

__"It's how humans name their pets. It's about a feeling."_ _

__"It's about nonsense. You never let a human name anything: they’re absolutely _obsessed_ with all their dangly bits,” Crowley bit out with the deep-seated bitter resentment of one who would never forgive _amorphophallus titanium_ , “no plant deserves what they’ve done, _not even the cacti_ – and you heard the absolute _wisdom_ the first two came out with on the spot, like the ‘maned wolf’ or the ‘king cobra’ or – "_ _

__"Mongoose."_ _

__"Yes, exactly my point - "_ _

__"No," Aziraphale said with the glee of the divinely inspired (that is to say, someone who can see the opportunity for an enormous cosmic joke), "your cat."_ _

__Crowley appeared frozen between too many objections to count. "She's not _my_ cat."_ _

__"I suppose not," Aziraphale agreed, "but you do seem to be her serpent."_ _

__Any objections which Crowley could have mustered – no doubt many in number, and all ineffectual in the face of, well, Aziraphale's face – were cut off by the fact that when he tried to lift his head to deliver them, the calico pounced and his head hit the ground again with an impressive resonance through the floorboards._ _

__"Mongoose it is," Aziraphale said with quiet satisfaction._ _

__Crowley muttered, "You are the only reason I know this isn't Hell."_ _

__"Don't be ridiculous. They wouldn't have these dears in Hell, you know that."_ _

__"Well, they definitely wouldn't have this one in Hea – the Other One." Crowley waved a hand vaguely in the direction of where the box had been, but Aziraphale decided to politely look at where the box actually was without comment. "Or that one. Too... _elemental_ for your lot." Patting Tartan with a smile, Aziraphale risked a peek out of the corner of his eye at the Deathbringer and had to agree. _ _

__"We still have one to name, my dear."_ _

__Crowley offered a somewhat unprintable verdict on that, in the sense that it was in a language which had existed before the written word and a dialect which firmly believed that any nerdish types who even thought about inventing said word should be thrown from cliffs to see if that did them any good. "Well, it only seems fair. I named two of them, after all."_ _

__"I am not agreeing to either of those," Crowley said, quite truthfully, in the sense that begrudging acceptance and dutiful spousal resignation were not the same thing as active consent. "And That One is not letting anyone name it. No point."_ _

__The two of them allowed a moment's silence in deference to the Deathbringer._ _

__"You must name the other one, though."_ _

__"There's no _must_ about it, angel," Crowley snarled up at the ceiling. "They're your cats, you do your... _angel_ thing and that's that."_ _

__Aziraphale pursed his lips, patting Tartan's fur absent-mindedly. Anyone else might perhaps have been confused as to how Crowley was projecting the image of being curled up in a sulk whilst pinned by a kitten; Aziraphale had never asked. He just thought._ _

__"And if I gave them away?"_ _

__Crowley's limbs went still. "What?"_ _

__Aziraphale's voice, like most angels' voices, was not given to deception. Angels were honest to a fault, 'fault' being the operative word, given that 'sin' had already been taken. An angel would tell you exactly how they were going to hurt you, because that was the point of honesty. Demons lied all the time, and thought it on the whole rather unfair that they were still seen as the bad guys by the general human populace, unless of course humans were much more self-aware than most beings of such stock could believe._ _

__Crowley could be very honest, especially when it came to something other than expressing emotions to the face of another being. It only stood to reason, then, that whilst Aziraphale struggled with lying, you didn't spend 6000 years working for a post-Fall Heaven without learning the sort of skills which could get you far in government should you be able to stand all the drinking and ties._ _

__"What if," Aziraphale said carefully, endeavouring to look at Crowley in a not-looking-at-Crowley manner, "what if I were to give them away?"_ _

__With a mastery of limbs not usually gifted to him (and unlikely to be gifted again by Mongoose), Crowley raised himself up on his elbows. His eyes were narrowed and suspicious, which wasn't all that unusual save that he was in the bookshop. "Why would you do that?"_ _

__"Perhaps it might be the right thing to do?" Aziraphale tested. "After all, I know I can't adopt all of Her creatures, that's the humans' job."_ _

__"And a bang up job they're doing of it, too."_ _

__"Still, stewards of the Earth and all." Aziraphale patted Tartan again, trying his utmost not to curl his fingers deep into that soft fur. "I could put up posters!"_ _

__"That's for when they _lose_ cats, Aziraphale," Crowley said, now almost sat fully upright, despite Mongoose pawing at his shirt. "These weren't _lost_ , they were – " And he cut himself off abruptly, looking a little like he’d caught himself out._ _

__"You found them."_ _

__Crowley pressed his lips together, either stopping himself from expressing sentiment or trying to swallow a sour candy._ _

__"You found them," Aziraphale repeated carefully, with a whole new sympathy for the metal-detectorist who, after years of drinks cans and lost earrings, trips over a Celtic hoard and has to figure out which media outlet will slow the archaeologists down long enough. "You brought them here, yes, you say you passed them along, which in a way means – ”_ _

__"Don't." Crowley's index finger was extended in an extremely menacing manner for a single digit (at least, in a manner more worthy of one finger to the side). "I brought them to an angel. I saw cats in the rain and I thought 'oh, that'll be angelic business then, something for the softy to take care of', it's – it's the Arrangement, right, it's just the same sort of – "_ _

__Quietly, Aziraphale said, "I thought we got rid of that."_ _

__The menacing finger wavered in its sense of demonic righteousness (or, from a certain perspective, angelic wrongfulness), as Crowley's face longed for sunglasses. He swallowed audibly. "Right. Well, the spirit of it, anyway. Old time's sake. That sort of thing."_ _

__Politely – or, perhaps more accurately, because his heart was breaking just a little – Aziraphale did not comment on the way Crowley's hand had found Mongoose and was clinging on for dear life. "Of course," he said soothingly, ceding a step or several in the conversation. "I suppose it would be rude of me, too."_ _

__"'Rude'?" Crowley sounded ever so lost._ _

__"Well, rejecting a gift of goodness and all. Or badness," he added out of habit, even though really the whole point was very much moot now (whatever 'moot' actually meant). "And they are only children right now. They'll have to stay safe for a while."_ _

__There was this laugh which escaped Crowley sometimes, half-strangled and half-surprised. It had taken Aziraphale a long time to gather enough data to cross-reference and discover a not inconsiderable amount of overlap with when Crowley's thoughts had once again pinged back with the inevitability of an anxiety-driven elastic band to The Beginning. "Didn't stop someone putting the children out in the rain."_ _

__"They're not in the rain anymore." Aziraphale brushed his fingers against the box and did not comment on its dryness. Crowley had never mentioned a single extended wing, after all. "Just one name left, and you might say they have a home."_ _

__As if on cue, Mongoose backed away just a touch, enough to convey the same sense as unlocking a gateway._ _

__Crowley's mouth wrinkled sideways, not out of disgust perhaps but a certain distaste with a hiss not very tucked away in the corner. Aziraphale did honestly hate making the demon feel trapped – it had certainly never been his intention (unless you counted trapping him in a divine meal and pleasant conversation, in which case Aziraphale could cackle with the best of them, purely theoretically of course) but Crowley had a way of seeing entrapment in any and all things. The best Aziraphale could do, as much as he hated how little it seemed, was to sit perfectly still and make it clear that he was free to leave whenever he wanted. If this involved petting a cat and developing a sudden interest in whether the alcoves required dusting, then that was an improvement on startling Michelangelo so badly that an entire choir of angels invented the 1960s half a millennium too soon._ _

__Slowly – with one eye at all times on Mongoose, who contented herself for now padding alongside with a watchful eye – very slowly Crowley slinked back to his feet and cautiously advanced on the box. Aziraphale pursed his lips and focused on Gerald, the funnelweb he had been cultivating as an extra line of defence. Only once the demon and cat’s footsteps had passed by did Aziraphale let himself also look around._ _

__The Deathbringer scowled at the two voyeurs, a growl more appropriate to a hellhound eyeing their throats with relish. Then she turned and nuzzled at the unnamed kitten, who whined softly and wriggled her legs as she turned slightly. The Deathbringer rumbled, and the unnamed Fourth blinked sleepy blue eyes up at her fairy godmothers with their wands at the ready. (Metaphor, again. They didn’t have the right kind of wings, and Aziraphale could never make any hats work, much less the triangular variety.)_ _

__Aziraphale gazed upon the scene for a moment, being only angelic at heart. Then his eyes drifted with a certain inevitability to his right and his heart felt capable of rather more than that._ _

__Despite their extensive experimentation with dictionaries and before (Aziraphale's copy of Johnson's dictionary still smelled of spilled cologne and vast quantities of snuff), what humans still lacked was a name for the expression on Crowley's face in that moment. That wasn't their fault, though. It was the sort of thing even an angel would have to sing._ _

__Crowley cleared his throat sharply and Aziraphale felt the usual pang of disappointment as a pair of sunglasses materialised, pushed up to cover sunbeam eyes._ _

__"Carina."_ _

__"I'm sorry?" First he couldn't make sense of the syllables, for all that he must have heard them correctly; then he thought perhaps he hadn't, and Crowley had been referencing some sort of overdramatic opera or Latin music sensation; and finally the astronomical penny dropped, and his breath caught. "Oh."_ _

__"Yeah, well," Crowley grumbled, straightening up. "No reason to think of something new. It's just a cat."_ _

__"Of course," Aziraphale said soothingly._ _

__"S'what I said." Most people couldn't quite get their shoulders to envelop their heads in their efforts to hide, but that was what a lack of familiarity with human skeletons would get you (or perhaps not so much a lack of familiarity as the same spirit of endeavour which set fire to Lego instructions and decided to make a functioning microwave). "Anyway, should be getting on. Things to do. You know how it is."_ _

__Aziraphale did not – or, to be more accurate, he knew all too well. "It's still raining."_ _

__"It's stopped now."_ _

__"No." Aziraphale did not look out of the window. "It won't stop all evening."_ _

__Crowley's fingers caught on the doorframe._ _

__Apparently it was all the opening necessary. Mongoose hopped onto the table, to Aziraphale's head, to the standing lamp, and finally Crowley's shoulder, the better to yowl a complaint in his ear._ _

__Crowley cursed; Crowley complained._ _

__Aziraphale soothed; Aziraphale made tea._ _

__Milk appeared for the cats, from whom nobody could quite say (besides a vague idea that surely all cats drink milk before they have the teeth to devour the flesh of their enemies). The Deathbringer and Carina refused all further attempts at removal, but did allow extensive renovations to the box which involved Crowley issuing several judgments on Aziraphale’s grasp of interior design. Tartan ventured further afield and began negotiations with Gerald. Mongoose continued her investigation of Crowley’s edibility with all the fanatical fervour of a TripAdvisor reviewer with aspirations._ _

__It didn’t stop raining in the morning either. In fact, it didn’t stop until Crowley had slipped into the unfathomable mystery of sleep and Aziraphale went to retrieve the book which still lay open, ready for him._ _

__Aziraphale was no stranger to distraction. If he started reading then that was where he stayed, with cocoa only one of the more frequent casualties. When reading, it became even easier to forget the endless concerns of a corporeal form, not least of which the idea of time and a cricked neck._ _

__All this was to say that when Aziraphale found that he’d finished the book, he returned to find, in a sunbeam he'd spent many decades encouraging across his floorboards, four bundles of fur and one decidedly entwined Biblical serpent._ _

__With a smile, and a niggle at the back of his mind which might have been written by Andrew Lloyd Webber (because God had never seen a terrible joke She didn’t want to shout in your ear), he went to put the kettle on._ _

**Author's Note:**

> Maned wolf and king cobra are care of this amazing comic: https://www.birdandmoon.com/comic/misleading-names/
> 
> Carina is care of this post identifying the nebula Crowley says he helped on: https://trickster-archangel.tumblr.com/post/186052198751/so-some-days-ago-i-read-a-post-from-someone-who
> 
> Just started haunting Tumblr again over this show so feel free to drop by and say hi at my ancient blog: https://triffidsandcuckoos.tumblr.com/


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